Ok…here’s the deal. The articulation project that I spoke of earlier this year is coming to fruition. Briefly, the five sending schools in our district will be sharing a Web log with us to create a learning object repository for Social Studies lessons and ideas. They would like to be able to sort these lessons by grade level, core content standards, and by school name. Obviously, the easiest way to do this would be to create multiple departments, but as noted earlier, that’s not yet an option in Manila. I suggested that we could create separate sites for, say, grade levels and then departmentalize by standards or schools. But that still doesn’t accomplish the ultimate goal. I’m also wondering about keyword searching with Manila. Or should we implement a Google search that might do the trick.

Without the multiple departments, I’m kinda stumped on how to accomplish this. Any and all suggestions welcomed.

Ok, don’t get me wrong, this is cool and all. And thank you Jake sincerely for continuing to crank out upgrades to Manila. But I once again just want to gently urge the consideration of these features that were originally to be released in June…

The news item editing user interface has many new options including: the ability to enable or disable posting of new comments, limiting to a specified number of comments, an option to receive comments and Trackback pings in email.

Support has been added for multiple departments.

Summary feature allows Manila site editors to easily create longer news item posts, which are linked to from the home page.

A new admin page allows managing editors to restrict access to areas of the site based on membership level (member, editor, managing editor, etc).

Each Manila site now has an events page, viewable by managing editors, which displays a log of recent events in the site — recent member log-ins and sign-ups, news aggregator scans, comments, trackback pings, etc.

I know many of the promised improvements have been made, and again, I appreciate the efforts. And I know that the education realm is not the highest priority. But the ones listed above are the ones central to improving Manila for classroom uses, especially the ability to restrict access based on membership level. And I still believe that if Userland is interested, they can make serious inroads into the education area as a CMS first and Web log maker second.

Ok, now having just said that looks don’t matter for the average Web log, looks obviously do matter a lot for the average school Website. And since I’ve been pushing my knowledge of CSS for just that purpose, sites like Listamatic are worth keeping track of. It has a bunch of predesigned lists complete with code and styles to play with. After watching the way Bryan Bell uses CSS to create Manila templates, I’m going to keep at this ’til I get it… (via Dan Gillmor)
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Pat and Charlie Lowe went back and forth a bit about Manila as a Content (or Class) Management System and I just want to throw these two or three cents in to the mix:

1. I think Pat is right when he cites tech support as a barrier to open source adoption at this point. I’m fortunate enough to have a very smart and talented group to help me through my Manila implementation, but I’m sure my experience is rare in other schools.

2. Right now, there are no hosting alternatives for open source CMS, at least as far as I can tell in my limited knowledge. As Pat and others have been saying since the beginning, none of this will take hold without that. Manila has eBN and Weblogger and there are some others. And there’s some talk that TypePad will be free to schools.

3. Finally, I’m looking forward to the time when I can really start to use Manila’s CMS potential. I don’t think I’ve totally wrapped my brain around that whole concept yet, which is why I’m going to make every effort to get out to SF and take advantage of Erin and Bryan’s day long Manila/Frontier workshop.

I understand Charlie’s concerns that one CMS gets adopted by edubloggers and then that company takes the program in another direction. But I think we’re too early in the game to fear that right now. I’m certainly not adverse to looking at Drupal or other open source CMS, but right now, and I think this is true for most schools, lack of support and time make it almost impossible.

Just opened the door after about six hours straight of working on the soon to be official Hunterdon Central Web Log Manual which my fried brain tells me is probably about 87.2% done. Since I have literally been accosted with requests over the last two days to create dozens of sites in the next two weeks, I figured it was time to try to set it in stone, the policies, the procedures, and some of the philosophy. No doubt this is a work in progress, and if any of you out there lead boring enough lives to give me some feedback on what you see here I would greatly appreciate it. As long as I get it by tomorrow…;0)

Not to revisit all of this yet again, because I am loving Manila the more and more I get into it, but it still surprises me how convoluted some of the configs are to set these up. I’ve been waiting patiently for Jake and others to come through on promised upgrades, and I know they are working as hard as they can. But I swear it feels like I could cut at least a third of this manual if we just defaulted to news item sites, could create news and story pages in the same space, and could add editors and members in a more streamlined way. Then again, if all of that stuff happened, I wouldn’t have anything to keep complaining about.

A final note…I launched into my aggregation nation spiel with one of the teachers who was wanting Web logs and I have to say it made my day when I saw the lights go on as to what I was talking about. We spent more time on Bloglines than his site…And from the manual, this is my attempt at a Mom’s definition of RSS type stuff. Tell me what you think:

Teachers who use employ student Manila sites can make their lives much easier by understanding the syndication aspect of the software. In a nutshell, every Manila Web log generates a behind-the-scenes script that is constantly updated as new content is added. This script allows interested readers to “subscribe” to the Web log using what is called a news aggregator. In essence, this news aggregator checks the script on a regular (sometimes hourly) basis and displays any new content to a Web page. The great thing is that news aggregators can keep track of as many of these scripts as you enter, and they bring the content from all the “subscribed to” Web logs into one place. That means if you have 24 students with 24 Web logs, you DON’T have to visit 24 sites to see what they’re up to. You only need to visit one!

I feel like a cheerleader…

Lila Efimova has been compiling some add-on tools for Web log use including tracking and site statistics. It’s pretty amazing how quickly people are starting to drill down into the data that Web logs are producing, everything from creating neighborhoods of sites based on content to auto-RSS discovery to visual representations of your Web log universe. Most of this is just for fun/vanity type stuff. But what I am most struck by is the nuance in what all of these different yet basically similar services offer. Fascinating to watch, if you ask me.
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Just installed the RSS Explorer tool bar (via Lockergnome) and I like it a lot already. It will search for an XML feed when I’m on a site and then with a click it will subscribe it to BlogLines or a bunch of other aggregators. It even has a link to check whether or not your feed validates.

On a side note, more and more people are catching on to RSS. Surfing the Net with Kids now has one:

“It’s a classic case of throwing the baby out with the bath water. RSS avoids the dual problems of spam and spam filters because you do not need to divulge your email address to anyone (no more spam) and only you control your list of subscriptions (sidestepping spam filters entirely.) ” (via Scripting News)

Chris Pirillo has been evangelizing about this lately, and it’s another selling point to people (read: parents and teachers) to give it a try.
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Here’s another really good tutorial on Manila that came across my referers today. From the Social Enterprises for Learning Forum at Berkeley. I like the little quick launch box in the nav column that gets around the highly intuitive Editor’s Only toolbar. Pat most likely had something to do with this…nice work.
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“Thank you for your interest in creating a one year eBN Weblogger Manila™ web site at educational pricing. We offer single Manila site hosting for individual teachers at $19.95 for the first year, with renewal at $39.95 per year should you decide to continue the use of your one year trial site.”

Definitely a big step on the road to accessibility to hosting thanks to Pat and Weblogger.com.
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Been thinking about changing the look here for a while and thought heck, since everyone else is doing it, might be as good a time as any to play a little. I’m trying to crack “get” how CSS works, and looking at a lot of what Bryan Bell does with his sites since they are so very cool. (Wouldn’t it be fun to have that talent? Just for a day or two?)This will probably go through some iterations, so if something doesn’t look right, please let me know.

If you’re reading this that means my migration over to Weblogger.com is complete and I’m up an running…FINALLY. I’ll be at Middlebury presenting “Web Logs as Journalism” with Sarah tomorrow and then camping for a few days. Look for regular posts again next week. Oh Happy Day!

Sarah points to this updated list of updates, and I swear I must have missed the whole site access piece that, as Sarah correctly notes, sounds like it will solve a lot of the privacy issues we’ve been talking about. I am really looking forward to this release as it will have some pretty radical changes implemented. It says here the release date is June 2…did it get shipped????
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Phil Windley (who I’m going to have to add to my aggregator) reports that he has a feed for his class syllabus either daily, weekly or monthly depending on his student’s needs. Now I know this is a college setting and that logistically there may not be a need for this in a k-12 setting. I guess I’m still amazed at the concept of supplying the information in a number of forms to a larger audience in they need or desire it.

In a meeting yesterday the supervisors were lamenting the fact that we have a couple of dozen committees running here dealing with “critical issues” that rarely communicate with each other. When I proposed the solution of creating a Committee Web log where minutes and notes for all the committees were posted that could be sortable by department AND, just for the heck of it, could also be pushed to individuals via e-mail if they so desired, everyone was like “We can do that?” and then “When can we do that?” It’s on the list for May 20, the day after the release of the new and improved Frontier/Manila product.
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I was thinking yesterday that I might start a Web log for this Web site transformation project just to keep all of the relevant info in one place and to give people an idea of what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. There is so much to do.

The good news is that Seb has agreed to consult on the project, and I’m very happy to have him on board. He’s always been one of those that has pushed my thinking on this, and I think we’re both psyched to see where it might lead. And I have the good fortune of having a Systems Analyst and technology group that is very skilled and supportive. This idea keeps coming more and more into focus as we talk about process and implementation, and it’s starting to feel like a team instead of a lone voice in the wilderness.

One theme that has arisen as I’ve presented to various groups and begun to flesh out the details is that what we’re creating here is more than just a Web site; it’s going to be a tool to enhance teaching and learning. People have a bit of a hard time getting their brains around the idea of using the Web site not only as a communications tool but as a teaching tool. I’ve been able to show some great examples both of district use and of classroom use, but the vision that we’re creating deals with the seamless integration of the whole package: static information, department specific multimedia dynamic content (KM in here), teaching and collaboration space for lessons and learning objects, electronic portfolio space, SIS interface for data access, and eventually, personalized Intranet space utilizing highly specific RSS feeds to consume and publish relevant content to a variety of audiences. It’s a mind boggling concept for most…flexibility and empowerment for all members of the school community. Especially when you consider the limited interaction most have had with our current Web site.

So we’re taking that end result and trying to break it down into pieces that we need to build to form the whole puzzle. We’re going to spend the next month or two just talking to the people who are most involved here: teachers, supervisors and to some extent students. With any luck, we’ll have a site plan by Sept. 1 and we’ll begin creating and implementing in late Fall. Right now, we’re looking to launch portions of the site around the first of the year and have departments come on board slowly after that.

I’ve always been impatient, and that seems like such a long time to me. But I’ve been convinced that the bulk of the time needs to be spent up front. I don’t want to rush through the planning. But I am looking forward to seeing where this will end up. Really excited. Really scared.

Wow…have we already tipped past text blogs straight to audio? Geesh, and here I though I was a bit ahead of the game…

Moorehead predicts that once the novelty of audio blogging subsides, it will become just another tool in a blogger’s repertoire.

Yep…yawn…this stuff is so passé…ho hum.
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After a few weeks of fast and furious back and forth about Manila, the Dev Group has fallen ominously (?) silent. Hmmm…hope that means Jake is working. I’ve got a group coming in on Wednesday to be trained on this stuff and I sure would love it if the new News Item interface was released…who do I call???
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On the Yahoo Manila Dev Group, David clears up most of my pinging issues:

Bottom line: Trackback is basically a cross-site commenting technology. Heck, I’d call it that “Cross-site comments”. Others have come to a similar conclusion: http://kalsey.com/blog/2003/02/simplecomments/

I’m writing a comment about something you wrote, and I want to tell you that I’ve done that. From a technologist’s perspective, that is called “pinging”, but from a user’s perspective it should be called “Notify” or something even more obvious (e.g. “Send my comments to original site [url]”).

If I want you to tell me when you comment on what I’ve written, I must enable notification, which technologists call “incoming pings” but I would suggest that users need something simpler here too (e.g. “Receive comments from other sites”).

Similarly for “URLs to ping”, I’d suggest “URLs to send my comments to.” Similarly for “Incoming pings require approval”, I’d suggest “Incoming comments require approval”

I guess I didn’t understand that Trackback wasn’t automatic, that I had to turn it on for every post or comment. Hmmm…now I have to think about why I wouldn’t want a particular post to be pinged or pingable…

Back from Fantasy Island and man does it seem like things are moving light speed around here. I am amazed at what the Manila Dev group is doing and I can’t wait for Jake to release the new News Item interface. I’m doing some training next Tuesday with some teachers from Asbury Park High School and that would be a HUGE improvement in being able to get them involved. Please Jake and Seb and Dave, hurry…HURRY!

With all this talk and action about feature requests and improvements, it’s opening up many new directions for using Manila in the classroom. I think it’s time to get back to some of the Best Practices that people are developing. There are definitely going to be some very cool new ways to implement and use all of this with students, and since the technical developments escape me, that’s where I need to focus. What are we going to do with Trackback? The news feeds and aggregators? How are we going to get kids collaborating and communicating at an even higher level? Some very interesting possibilities…
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(Via Andrew Carpenter) I think I knew this at some point, but Voidstar has put together an RSS generator for Google News queries. Now that in itself is cool enough, but I’m wondering how hard it would be to create a similar generator for searches done on Web log sites. Since I already use Google to search my site, could someone set up a query, say “RSS,” that would then be fed to them each time the term is used here? Similarly, think how that might work on a school Web site…hmmmm…Thanks to Andrew as well for donating his .opml file. If I get the chance later today, I’ll extract the edu Web loggers he’s got and add them to my own then repost.
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Ok, I have to admit it. I like what Dave is doing here. And if he and Jake et. al. come through with a similar form to update other nav. links, I’ll be really very happy.

On the Yahoo Manila Dev Group, Seb notes that there is a little known macro that “allows a theme designer to include specific messages in the overall theme template thus making it possible for users to edit specific sections of their template via separate edit buttons…” Perfect! I think this is what Pat alluded to in his comment to a previous post. Now, can someone show me how to include this in a template? Half the macros I try to embed seem to disappear. Is there a template creation tutorial out there somewhere? Something that clarifies exactly what can be templatized and what can’t? (I know I’ve asked this before…)

And later…this:

We’re going to do a user interface for Theme designers for modules.
Dave and I talked about it the other night after dinner, and Bryan Bell
and I just had a phone conversation about it. Stay tuned…

-Jake

Ok…this could be getting really good now…
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Despite all of the movement by Dave and Jake and Bryan to clean up the templates and streamline the process, they still have a long way to go. I’m hoping they hang in there. But as positive as these efforts are, I’m starting to wonder if we’ll ever get what we need, those of us down here at the classroom level. I mean a spam free e-mail and a “neat browser-based blogroll editor” might be nice but how about getting Trackback working, or making an easy way to add links to the side column without having to create an include message and all that stuff? (Really, wouldn’t it be nice to be add content to the side columns without all the configuration that’s required now? Surely someone can include an editable list or two in the template.)

All Dave is doing right now is making blogs for individuals who want to implement for personal use…I haven’t heard or read anything about implementation for courses or classrooms. I guess I’m just going to have to find some more patience…

In the spirit of sharing (and playing), headline links to an .opml file of educator Web loggers that are currently in my Sharpreader list. There are 42 right now, and I will update the list as needed. If you have Sharpreader, which I highly recommend, all you need to do is save the file and then Import it into the software (File: Import Subscriptions…easy.) You can delete or reorganize as you like. Let me know if I’m missing anyone…

Ryan raises some really interesting ideas about the uses of RSS and trackback and how they might work in the classroom. The ultimate here from a teaching standpoint would obviously be an aggregated page of student work that was somehow sortable by either student or assignment or, preferably, both. Even more, it would be great to be able to comment back to student sites via the aggregator (which I think is something that Radio can do but not Manila(?)).

Even more, however, is the use of the aggregator by students to follow each other’s work. I alluded to this before when I was thinking about putting my students into smaller working groups, a plan I’m going to implement this week. The desired effect is to get students to learn from the process of others by tuning in more closely, and to give feedback in the collaborative group style. Not that they can’t just click through to the three or four sites in their group, but I’d like them to see how easy this new concept of information gathering is. I see them subscribed to the class homepage, 3/4 feeds of their workgroup, the NY Times and BBC newsfeeds, and a couple of feeds of sites that correspond to their beats. First stop every day will be the aggregator.

As always, I wish I knew more about the technology. When Ryan and Dale Pike and others say they want more control over the creation of the feed, my eyes start to glaze over. I probably should carve out some time to get half my brain around the whole RSS 2.0 thing since it sounds like it adds a lot of flexibility to the whole concept. Anyone read Ben Hammersley’s book yet?

Seb and others have really gotten into this RSS concept in a big way lately, and they’re talking about being able to do stuff that is way beyond my comprehension but that sounds pretty cool nonetheless. I’m not quite sure why I would have a need to create my own RSS feed if I have Manila or MT doing it for me, especially now with the capability of subscribing to separate department feeds. I haven’t even begun to think through that yet.

Anyway, today I was sitting in a meeting of well-meaning administrators who were discussing potential solutions to a perceived lack of communication between parents and the school, and all I could think about was RSS. I know I wrote about this before, but somewhere on this new site we’re (hopefully) creating, I want a page where parents can 1.) learn about the whole RSS concept in easy to understand terms, 2.) get a list of every departmental RSS feed that we have, and 3.) be able to check and subscribe to whatever they want. Heck, the implications for how we communicate with each other within the school are equally as HUGE (and to be honest, even more of a selling point.) If everyone managed their knowledge on a Web log, and all of those feeds were available to whomever wanted them, e-mail around this place would be cut in half, and we’d all be a heckuva lot more well-informed about what’s going on here. Accessible information easily made available to the consumers who need/want it. What a concept, huh? I know I have no life, but all of this really does blow me away.
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